Evidence From Dance Marking”
found that dancers can improve the ability to do complex moves

by walking through them
slowly and encoding the movement with a cue through ‘marking’. Researcher
Edward Warburton, a former professional ballet dancer,

and colleagues were
interested in exploring the "thinking behind the doing of dance."

The findings, published
in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association

for Psychological Science,
suggest that marking may alleviate the conflict

between the cognitive and
physical aspects of dance practice — allowing dancers to memorize and
repeat steps more fluidly. This creates what I call “superfluidity," which
is the highest tier of ‘flow.’

Expert ballet dancers seem to
glide effortlessly across the stage, but learning the steps

is both physically and
mentally demanding. New research suggests that dance marking

—loosely practicing a routine
by "going through the motions"—may improve the quality of dance
performance by reducing the mental strain needed to perfect the
movements.

"It is widely assumed
that the purpose of marking is to conserve energy," explains Warburton,
professor of dance at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "But
elite-level dance

is not only physically
demanding, it's cognitively demanding as well. Learning and rehearsing

a dance piece requires concentration on
many aspects of the desired performance."

Marking essentially involves
a run-through of the dance routine,

but with a focus on the
routine itself, rather than making the perfect movements.

"When marking, the
dancer often does not leave the floor, and may even substitute hand gestures
for movements," Warburton explains. "One common example is using a
finger rotation

to represent a turn while not
actually turning the whole body."

To investigate how marking
influences performance, the researchers asked a group

of talented dance students to
learn two routines: they were asked to practice one routine

at performance speed and to
practice the other one by marking.

Across many of the different
techniques and steps, the dancers were judged more highly

on the routine that they had
practiced with marking—their movements on the marked routine appeared to be
more seamless, their sequences more fluid.

One of the holy grail of neuroscience research
is a brain experiment that shows us

how to live better and teaches us how to think better.
From the Bell Curve to PET scans,

we hope that studies of our neurology and psychology will
guide us in designing our society too. Using the latest findings about the
brain to raise your child is the latest prize in this search.

One of the most fascinating articles in neuroscience I've
read recently was "The Secret to Raising Smart Kids", by Carol
Dweck. This article discusses a set of research projects by Dweck and
others

on how different views of intelligence held by
children affect their school performance.

Those kids with a "fixed mindset" think that
intelligence is innate and those kids with a

"growth mindset" think that you intelligence is
something you improve through working hard.

What Dweck found is that kids with the fixed mindset gave
up when they encountered

really hard problems, apparently because they imagined
they had hit their plateau;

if they were really talented, then the problems would
have been easy.

Growth-oriented kids, however, treat difficult problems
as opportunities to improve

their
intelligence. Not surprisingly, growth-oriented kids continue to improve in
school.

Here's the kicker: you can change a child's mindset by
having them read neuroscience,

but choose it carefully! Dweck did an experiment where
she gave one group of kids

regular instruction and another group instruction plus an
article about how neurons

continue to grow throughout life and can be encouraged to
grow through effort. Those kids

who read this article tended to adopt the growth mindset,
and do better than the other kids.

This is neurosci-therapy, akin to bibliotherapy where
psychologists have clients read books

to improve their outlook. Our faith in
neuroscience gives these findings the ability

to change our minds (and maybe our brains).

Dweck has been researching and promoting this outlook
for years.

Dweck has a book, Mindset, and may or may not be
finishing a software program (called Brainology) that takes this idea further,
allowing kids to play with a simulated brain

and watch neurons grow, further cementing a growth
mindset.

Most of the discussion online
about Dweck's work is concerned with the robustness

of her findings and whether
she is careful enough to distinguish intelligence from schoolwork.

Many
psychologists think that intelligence is one of the most innate and fixed parts
of our minds, based upon many of their tests which show that it doesn't change
much as you age.

But perhaps their project is
a bit circular in that the very act of giving someone a

"test of their
intelligence" encourages them to adopt a fixed mindset! Feel free to delve
into Dweck's work and the intelligence debates if you want to form a proper
opinion about them.

Which brings us the kicker to the kicker. We may wish
that neuroscientists could run an experiment which would settle once and for
all whether intelligence can be improved or not. But to do that

we'd have to figure out what we really want intelligence
to mean, especially for our kids.

And that turns out to be precisely the problem. Both
fixed and growth perspectives

have good points, but they disagree on what is worth
measuring and for what reasons.

And each article you read reinforces one notion or the
other. This is a scientific deadlock, and Dweck is suggesting a radical view:
choose the neuroscience you read to fit the society you want to live in.

The real lesson for me here is that every bit of
neuroscience you read potentially pushes you

to adopt a particular mindset. Not just about
intelligence and performance, but society, relationships, addiction, sexuality,
aggression, etc. We need to pay close attention to

this neuroscience-feedback. And this isn't all that
different from choosing to watch CNN or FoxNews or IndyMedia --
where they each show facts, but which facts they show

and how they are framed, helps to reinforce a particular
view of the world.

Saturday, 22 July 2017

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almost always when the conscious mind is thinking of
something else, or nothing at all.

This is where the daily athletic process is crucial to
creative breakthroughs.

The creative hunter must be intensely interested in
solving a particular problem

while having a laid-back attitude about finding a
solution.

In an essay from 1911 called On Vital Reserves: The
Energies of Men and the Gospel

of Relaxation William James said, "when you are
making your general [creative] resolutions

and deciding on your plans of campaign, keep them out of
the details. When once a decision

is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss
absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome. Unclamp, in a
word, your intellectual and practical machinery, and let it run free;

and the service it will do you will be twice as
good." In order to stop over-thinking a problem remember to UNCLAMP and
let ideas that are buried in your unconscious mind surface into the light of
your conscious mind where you can access them intellectually.

Sweat is like WD-40 for your mind-–it lubricates the
rusty hinges of your brain

that are buried in the subconscious. Every thought that
you have is a unique tapestry of millions

of neurons locking together in a specific pattern-this is
called an engram.

If you do not 'unclamp' during the day, you get locked
into a loop of rut-like thinking.

If for any reason you are unable to do aerobic activity,

focused meditation is also an excellent way to
create a default state.

The urge to force a creative solution by never letting up
is a mistake that many "

Type-A" personality types typically make.
Loosen up! Allow yourself to 'space out' and daydream--doing so will allow the
creative juices to flow more easily. If you do not break apart the engrams
connected to the static thinking of your daily routine, you will not create new
neural networks needed for imagination. The answer will come, if you keep
hunting it down consciously,

but you must also step back and unclamp in
order for ideas in your unconscious mind

to bubble up and reveal their wisdom.

Arthur Koestler once described the experience of finding
the conscious truth

by connecting to the intuitive subconscious when he
explained the 'a-ha' moment by saying:

The moment of truth, the sudden emergence of a new
insight, is an act of intuition.

Such intuitions
give the appearance of miraculous flushes, or short-circuits of reasoning.

In fact they may be likened to an immersed chain,

of which only the beginning and the end are visible above
the surface consciousness.

The diver vanishes at one end of the chain and comes up
at the other end, guided by invisible links.

I like to use a split-brain model of "Down Brain/Up
Brain" to visualize the divide between

the conscious and subconscious minds. Although the entire brain
is always working in concert,

I find that it is useful to imagine your conscious mind
as being housed north of the mid-brain

in your 'Up Brain' of the cerebrum and prefrontal cortex
and that your subconscious mind

is tucked below the mid-brain in the 'Down Brain' of the
cerebellum and brainstem.

These are terms that I came up with as a hypothetical
model to help make abstract concepts of neuroscience easier to
visualize and apply to daily life. It's easy to picture ideas incubating

'down below' before they 'pop up' and reveal themselves
in your concscious mind

because this is how it actually feels and is universally
described.

THE 5 STEPS TO THE
CREATIVE PROCESS

In a landmark study of the creative process Nancy
Andreasan found the same general descriptions

of the creative process repeated again and again. The
common phrases that Dr. Andreasan heard repeatedly were things like: "I
can't force inspiration. Ideas just come to me when I'm not seeking them-when
I'm swimming or running or standing in the shower." "It happens like
magic."

"I can just see things that other people can't, and
I don't know why."

"The muse just sits on my shoulder." "If I
concentrate on finding the answer it never comes,

but if I let my mind just wander, the answer pops
in."

The creative
process moves through five stages.

It begins with preparation--an analytical time when
the basic information or skills are assembled.

It continues on to incubation–a more intuitive and
subconscious time in which you connect the dots in a default state. If you
stick with it through perspiration, this process will eventually lead to revelation–the
eureka experience when you literally feel the tumblers of your mind click

into place and you say: 'A-ha, I have found the
solution!' The creative process ends with production, a time when the
insights are put into a useful form and shared with others.

LESSONS FROM WRITERS ON AEROBIC INDUCED CREATIVITY

Ralph Waldo Emerson said of Thoreau: "The
length of his walk uniformly made the length

of his writing. If shut up in the house, he did not write
at all." I have dedicated an entire chapter

of my next book (Origins of Imagination: Exploring the
Neuroscience of Creative Thinking) to examples of writers throughout history
who have used physical activity as part of their process. Because it is nearly
impossible for neuroscientists to track the link between exercise and
creativity using current brain imaging technologies, I like to look at the
daily habits of creative greats

to find empirical proof of how aerobic exercise
facilitates the creative process.

Below are a few examples of writers who use aerobic
exercise as part of their creative process.

Louisa May Alcott tapped into the power of running in a
way that must have seemed bizarre

in the 1800s. She had an ecstatic connection to running
that seemed embedded deep in her cells. She loved to run through the woods, in
fact, she was an unexpected 'ultra-runner' of her day.

Louisa May Alcott famously said:

Active exercise was my delight from the time when a child
of six I drove my hoop around

the Common without stopping, to the days when I did my
twenty miles in five hours

and went to a party in the evening. I always thought I
must have been a deer or a horse

in some former state, because it was such a joy to run.
No boy could be my friend until I had beaten him in a race, and no girl if
she refused to climb trees, leap fences, and be a tomboy. . .

My wise mother, anxious to give me a strong body to
support a lively brain,

turned me loose in the country and let me run wild.

Henry Miller, who was an avid endurance cyclist,

described the importance of creating a default state to
improve his writing process by saying:

Each man has his own way. After all, most writing is done
away from the typewriter,

away from the desk. I'd say it occurs in the quiet,
silent moments, while you're walking or shaving

or playing a game or whatever. . .You're working, your
mind is working on this problem

in the back of your head. So, when you get back to the
machine it's a mere matter of transfer.

Joyce Carol Oates, who is a devoted runner,

has written one of the best descriptions of how running
facilitates her writing process:

Running seems to allow me, ideally, an expanded
consciousness in which I can envision

what I'm writing as a film or a dream. I rarely invent at
the typewriter but recall

what I've experienced. I don't use a word processor but
write in longhand, at considerable length. (Again, I know: writers are crazy.)
By the time I come to type out my writing formally,

I've envisioned it repeatedly. I've never thought of
writing as the mere arrangement of words

on the page but as the attempted embodiment of a vision:
a complex of emotions, raw experience. The effort of memorable art is to evoke
in the reader or spectator emotions appropriate

to that effort. Running is a meditation; more practicably
it allows me to scroll through,

in my mind's eye, the pages I've just written, proofreading
for errors and improvements.

Haruki Murukami published a book What I Talk About
When I Talk About Running in 2009.

When describing his daily writing process Murukami says:

When I'm in writing mode for a novel, I get up at 4:00 am
and work for five to six hours.

In the afternoon, I run for 10km or swim for 1500m (or do
both), then I read a bit and listen

to some music. I go to bed at 9:00 pm. I keep to this
routine every day without variation.

The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it's a
form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself

to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such
repetition for so long - six months to a year - requires a good amount of
mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel

is like survival training. Physical strength is as
necessary as artistic sensitivity.

A VIGOROUS INNER AND OUTER LIFE IS KEY TO CREATIVE OUTPUT

Researcher Dean Keith Simonton has compiled strong
evidence that consistent creative output results as much from a vigorous spirit
as it does from creative 'genius'. If you want to foster creativity, you need
to foster a curious, bold, and tenacious personality and mindset.

In every occupation Simonton studied-from composers,
artists, and poets to inventors and scientists, the story is the same: a high
number of creative breakthroughs is directly linked to the quantity

of work produced and a refusal to let failure dampen
enthusiasm or persistence. Regular physical activity reinforces the personality
traits needed to be a creative dynamo across the board.

Renowned creative greats like Pablo Picasso and Leonardo
da Vinci didn't create a constant stream of brilliant works. They had the
stamina and boldness to keep going after failure

and the confidence to admit that most of their
ideas were probably going to be duds

without losing enthusiasm. Thomas Edison once said
"I have not failed, I have just found 10,000 ways that don't
work....genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent
perspiration."

Creative greats have the resilience and drive
to not get beaten down by 'losing'

at a creative challenge. Just like athletes, they have
the tenacity to get up, dust themselves off

and refuse to quit. This mindset of determination is key
to the creative process.

Being creative is almost like throwing spaghetti against
a wall and seeing what sticks.

The more prolific and uninhibited you are about tossing
out new ideas,

the better your odds become of having creative
breakthroughs and being an innovator.

EXERCISE AND THE COLLECTIVE IMAGINATION OF OUR NATION

Part of the work I'm doing politically is to help create
public policies and initiatives

that make physical activity available to people from all
walks of life.

The more Americans we have being physically active and
sleeping well at night the more innovation, trademarks and patents our nation
will have and the more competitive we will be

in the global economy. In my eyes, the effect of inactivity
and obesity in our nation

Turbo Charged Reading.

About Me

I created and tutor Turbo Charged Reading via the web, or contact read@turbochargedreading.com for personal tuition. https://youtu.be/LyO3EkP1TdY Read fast, remember all that you want to, recall it at will, be creative, pass exams, read & remember and 'use' your library. Great for those with poor memories, read slowly or are dyslexic etc.